I'm not clear what this essay was attempting to achieve. The writing is incredibly dense and convoluted (even 'Sesquipedalian'; I looked up the word especially for Szendy), it is not easy or enjoyable to read at all. The central idea or argument was not clear to me.

The author meanders between topics but lacks brevity and a central narrative, thesis, or even chain of thought to keep us interested and tethered. We slowly wade through the unrelenting wall of text to cover all sorts, from the history of the image, to 'transmorphing', the environmental impact of images, anthropocentricism, mimicry, slow motion, 'escaping the frame', aerostatic imagery, simulacrum, all the way to satellites. All of these topics have the potential to be interesting but Szendy replaces utility and inquiry with pretentiousness, evidenced by the plethora of new terms he blithely coins. The final slap in the face is that he spends a good beginning portion of the book talking about his uncle, who is incredibly interesting to be fair, but spends far less time exploring Susan Sontag's work, who was the first person to even propose an 'ecology of images'.  He does address her stance, but it's buried within the essay, it would make more sense to use this as an entry point.

The whole structure and tone of the essay was bizarre and self-indulgent. Parts were interesting but I was frustrated by a quarter of the way through and things did not improve. Szendy does highlight some interesting ideas which may fit within a well-rounded definition of an ecology of images, but this essay was so horrible to read that I have no idea whether this was achieved. I'm not convinced it was.